10 year old told me he thinks spouse is cheating on me -- advice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I just spoke with DS again. He was looking at DH's phone without permission. He saw pictures/porn. He has begged me not to tell his father because he's not allowed to play with our phones without permission. I've told him over and over that he's not in trouble, no matter what.

But, he is afraid that his dad will be angry with him, he's afraid that the family will "blow apart" and it would be his fault, it's all just awful. He feels terrible. He said it was an app called kitkat (but he said it was not spelled with a ka? I'm not even sure what that means). He wants me to check DH's phone and see what's going on (should I tell him that's the same advice I got from DCUM? kidding....)

Added to that, I don't know exactly what my DH did. Was he looking at porn? I'm not going to divorce over that but I will still be extraordinarily pissed off that he allowed DS to see. Or is it more than that?

I don't know how to have DH reassure him somehow when he's begging me not to tell DH that he saw anything in the first place. Ugh.

You should thank you son for telling you. You should reassure him that you will not be telling his dad what he did or saw. You should also tell him that marriage is between two grown-ups, and now it is your job to figure out what to do with that information. Just like the information your son told you was private and will not be shared with dad, the conversation you have with dad will be private between dad and mom and not be shared with DS. Grown ups decide about the parameters of their relationships, and no matter what you and dad decide to do about staying married or not, you are both committed to being good parents to DS. Whether or not your family stays together, now or in the future, it will never be your DS's fault. Adults decide whether or not to stay married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I just spoke with DS again. He was looking at DH's phone without permission. He saw pictures/porn. He has begged me not to tell his father because he's not allowed to play with our phones without permission. I've told him over and over that he's not in trouble, no matter what.

But, he is afraid that his dad will be angry with him, he's afraid that the family will "blow apart" and it would be his fault, it's all just awful. He feels terrible. He said it was an app called kitkat (but he said it was not spelled with a ka? I'm not even sure what that means). He wants me to check DH's phone and see what's going on (should I tell him that's the same advice I got from DCUM? kidding....)

Added to that, I don't know exactly what my DH did. Was he looking at porn? I'm not going to divorce over that but I will still be extraordinarily pissed off that he allowed DS to see. Or is it more than that?

I don't know how to have DH reassure him somehow when he's begging me not to tell DH that he saw anything in the first place. Ugh.

You should thank you son for telling you. You should reassure him that you will not be telling his dad what he did or saw. You should also tell him that marriage is between two grown-ups, and now it is your job to figure out what to do with that information. Just like the information your son told you was private and will not be shared with dad, the conversation you have with dad will be private between dad and mom and not be shared with DS. Grown ups decide about the parameters of their relationships, and no matter what you and dad decide to do about staying married or not, you are both committed to being good parents to DS. Whether or not your family stays together, now or in the future, it will never be your DS's fault. Adults decide whether or not to stay married.

Disagree with PP. Do you trust your husband to put the child first? If so, tell your son that families don't keep secrets about important things. That you will look into what he saw, and get back to him (hopefully with both parents together, calmly, telling the truth).

Of course, given the child's age, the person at fault is your husband not the son. Imagine how you would feel if a stranger or neighbor left pornography out for a 10 year old to see. That can be quite traumatic.

You had better talk to your husband soon, because the kid is going through alot. Ideally, you and he can get on the same page.

IF, however, you think your husband's instinct will be to punish/yell at your son. Then I would not tell him. I might lie and say I had seen it. But this is not ideal. Lies breed lies.

So sorry that he brought this on the family.

Men can be very selfish.

[Anonymous]

I would *not* tie any confrontation to your son’s comment. If you end up fighting and/or breaking up he will never forgive himself for having started it. It will be hugely traumatizing. Find a different avenue to figure this out.

[Anonymous]

I guess asking the son for the password to dad's phone would be inappropriate, right?!

OP: I'm sorry you have to deal with this stress amongst everything else going on in the world.

[Anonymous]

OP - this is tough. Normally I would recommend confronting your DH (I know, cheaters will deny, but puts them on notice and shames some into stopping an online thing) but with your son at stake, no. I do think you are going to have to "accidently" discover the content on your DH phone - maybe claim it was receiving notifications and you wanted to shut off volume or whatever works - and then ask what is going on.

If this is impersonal online sexting on porn site - and, by the way, ads pop up with "call me right now - local woman wanting to f&ck" so it may just be that = he is looking at porn and your son saw the ads.

So sorry - what a crappy position to be in protecting your son while confronting your DH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I just spoke with DS again. He was looking at DH's phone without permission. He saw pictures/porn. He has begged me not to tell his father because he's not allowed to play with our phones without permission. I've told him over and over that he's not in trouble, no matter what.

But, he is afraid that his dad will be angry with him, he's afraid that the family will "blow apart" and it would be his fault, it's all just awful. He feels terrible. He said it was an app called kitkat (but he said it was not spelled with a ka? I'm not even sure what that means). He wants me to check DH's phone and see what's going on (should I tell him that's the same advice I got from DCUM? kidding....)

Added to that, I don't know exactly what my DH did. Was he looking at porn? I'm not going to divorce over that but I will still be extraordinarily pissed off that he allowed DS to see. Or is it more than that?

I don't know how to have DH reassure him somehow when he's begging me not to tell DH that he saw anything in the first place. Ugh.

You should thank you son for telling you. You should reassure him that you will not be telling his dad what he did or saw. You should also tell him that marriage is between two grown-ups, and now it is your job to figure out what to do with that information. Just like the information your son told you was private and will not be shared with dad, the conversation you have with dad will be private between dad and mom and not be shared with DS. Grown ups decide about the parameters of their relationships, and no matter what you and dad decide to do about staying married or not, you are both committed to being good parents to DS. Whether or not your family stays together, now or in the future, it will never be your DS's fault. Adults decide whether or not to stay married.

Disagree with PP. Do you trust your husband to put the child first? If so, tell your son that families don't keep secrets about important things. That you will look into what he saw, and get back to him (hopefully with both parents together, calmly, telling the truth).

Of course, given the child's age, the person at fault is your husband not the son. Imagine how you would feel if a stranger or neighbor left pornography out for a 10 year old to see. That can be quite traumatic.

You had better talk to your husband soon, because the kid is going through alot. Ideally, you and he can get on the same page.

IF, however, you think your husband's instinct will be to punish/yell at your son. Then I would not tell him. I might lie and say I had seen it. But this is not ideal. Lies breed lies.

So sorry that he brought this on the family.

Men can be very selfish.

There is a difference between keeping secrets and respecting privacy. Keeping secrets is bad. Keeping a discussion private is OK. If you want your kids to ever come to you and talk to you about anything, you need to let them know that you will respect their privacy by keeping conversations confidential unless they give permission otherwise. The exception to that rule is when someone is involved in something dangerous or that has a huge negative impact to someone else. In fact, the DS has followed that rule by alerting Mom to something that would normally be kept private, but which he knows is being kept secret because it is something that will have a huge negative impact on mom (and all of them).

Personally, I would not bring the son into it at all. If the husband is indeed behaving inappropriately, then he isn't putting anyone else in the family first and can't be depended on in any way.

I would look into this myself -- looking at the dad's phone when I could over a number of weeks as well as tracking all other activity -- credit cards, bank statements, where he says he's going and what evidence backs that up (car mileage, gps/phone locator, etc.)

Then and only then would I ask the spouse anything, preferably with whatever other evidence not derived from the son is available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would confront my spouse and say that our kid is very upset about all of this. You both need to get an answer to your kid about what the messages really were so he's not left thinking his dad is a cheater. And then, regardless of whether he was cheating, work on your marriage. Your son clearly thinks something could be up. Smile more, laugh more, be affectionate in front of him.

What—you are telling the WIFE to be more kittenish and appealing to this likely a-hole who blew up a family??

You sound extremely misogynistic.

New poster.

The bold above is classic DCUM projecting. NO idea yet if the DH is an "a-hole who blew up a family." None. Sure, he might be. Or the son might have gotten the wrong idea entirely.

We sure don't know, and OP doesn't know yet, so stow the "DH is obviously guilty, get a lawyer NOW" alarmist crap.

OP: What is getting lost here is the fact you say in the very first post that your DH tends to use terms like those and it doesn't alarm you in other contexts. You know your DH best; we don't. So I'd go to him -- don't let this wait or fester -- and be the adult and ask. "DS said he saw this on your phone and he came to me about it. He's concerned and he is interpreting it as something being wrong. Let's lay this to rest so DS is not chewing on this. What did he see? And let's go together to DS to explain it."

I don't have time or energy for farting around with snooping etc. Especially if there are zero other indications of any issues or any sneaking going on. Cut to the chase. Your DS is going to worry over this; frame this as a "We need to talk to EACH OTHER so we can both talk to DS" issue.

If DH hems and haws and is evasive, you'll have to have the guts to press him. If DH is embarrassed and sheepish because he calls some relative "baby girl" and realizes now that it looks silly -- that's another thing entirely.

The "snoop hard and secretly call a lawyer" posters are right in some cases on these forums, but in this case? Especially if you don't have DH's password etc. to get into the phone surreptitiously? Just sit DH down and tell him exactly what happened and say you want to see the phone so you and he can tell DS you saw the phone.

Whatever you do OP, ^^^^DO NOT DO THIS ^^^^^^^

Protect yourself and be smart. Period. No one is playing mind games ans trusting a cheating liar, confirmed or not. You don’t answer a call as a police officer and leave your weapon in the car since the people are neighbors you’ve always known. You protect yourself.

Protect yourself OP. Don’t give him a chance to delete evidence, go deeper undercover, and postpone blowing up the family. If he is cheating, he is lying, ans he will not confess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - this is tough. Normally I would recommend confronting your DH (I know, cheaters will deny, but puts them on notice and shames some into stopping an online thing) but with your son at stake, no. I do think you are going to have to "accidently" discover the content on your DH phone - maybe claim it was receiving notifications and you wanted to shut off volume or whatever works - and then ask what is going on.

If this is impersonal online sexting on porn site - and, by the way, ads pop up with "call me right now - local woman wanting to f&ck" so it may just be that = he is looking at porn and your son saw the ads.

So sorry - what a crappy position to be in protecting your son while confronting your DH.

Deceptive. Don’t do it. Punks way out.

[Anonymous]

I just did internet search with different spellings of KitKat and porn. I did not click on any links (I would tell you if I did- this is anonymous). From what I can gather- if this is what your son saw- it is disturbing.. not run of the mill stuff. You need to have a discussion with him about what he saw and help him process it. I think that is top priority right now, regardless of the type of porn to which he was exposed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just did internet search with different spellings of KitKat and porn. I did not click on any links (I would tell you if I did- this is anonymous). From what I can gather- if this is what your son saw- it is disturbing.. not run of the mill stuff. You need to have a discussion with him about what he saw and help him process it. I think that is top priority right now, regardless of the type of porn to which he was exposed.

Ok. What did you see?! - not OP

[Anonymous]

Beastiality? Violence?

[Anonymous]

I don’t want to search for it....

[Anonymous]

OP, I did a little investigating and Cit Cat looks like a Malaysian translation app! Sounds like he is talking to girls in foreign countries.

[Anonymous]

Your 10 yo saw porn and you are so calm about it? I am calling a troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I did a little investigating and Cit Cat looks like a Malaysian translation app! Sounds like he is talking to girls in foreign countries.

Trolls stepping their game up for 2021!!